I’d scheduled a pickup at the boat for 08:30 in the morning and was awake long before that time; waking up with the sun and doping myself with some double-strength Cappuccino in preparation for the ordeal at the controls of a kite. I was picked up exactly on time by Christian and his assistant. Considering he arrived at exactly 08:30 as promised I knew that this was a fellow German and it turns out that he’s from the capital city of Berlin (fellow Germans will know the typical accent they have). They took took me to shore in their dinghy and soon thereafter I had my gear on and they’d prepared a 2-line training kite for my instruction. It was difficult to keep the kite stable but they ran me through my paces; explaining the lines, setup and other terminology to me in a patient fashion. I got to practice keeping the kite at the 12 o’clock position and then at 2 o’clock and finally at 10 o’clock. After they’d gotten bored with my lack of progress they lied to me and told that I had potential and we went onto the real kite, which is much larger and somewhat more imposing! After the explanation and setup we got into the dinghy and went far from the beach and I got to practice the same maneuvers with a big piece of equipment rather than the small trainer kit. After it blew me overboard once (mea culpa) and I was hauled back aboard I got a break as we relocated to a more auspicious spot in the bay and I started doing all of the water-based work. After three hours I was done and they once again congratulated me on my work (and I’m sure they’ll be telling bar stories about their inept pupil this day for years to come) and I was done. It was less effort than I’d feared but I also didn’t get close to standing on a board and moving about the anchorage!
My plan to take the next set of lesson tomorrow has been hampered by the sunburn that I managed to collect – my nose is burning as I write this and I think I’ll hide from the sun tomorrow!
At about 2 in the afternoon I took the dinghy ashore, loaded with cleaning equipment to remove the rather large collection of local flora attached to the bottom. This time I took the bottle of Clorox with me and it turns out that it does work incredibly well; I used sand and my 3M kitchen pad to remove the green crud and then donned a glove to spread undiluted chlorine bleach on the upturned bottom. The chlorine bleached the off-color of the bottom and also removed stains that I’d never been able to remove before.
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